Monday, September 27, 2010

I Hope The Yankees Die But I Hope Joe Morgan Dies More

I'll give you a wrap-up of the end of the game in case you didn't stay up:

Red Sox go down 2-1 in the 7th on a TYR--bloop hit, front row homer.

Red Sox easily score twice in ninth because the man we own named Mariano comes in and blows yet another save to us.

Bottom 9, Papelbon comes in. I try not to mention the umps unless they're a complete joke. In this case, the home plate ump was like Ron Burgandy with the Teleprompter. Girardi may as well have said to his hitters, "Wait for your pitch, this umpire WILL NOT CALL A STRIKE." I hope when Steinbrenner's corpse makes the payment for that one, the money is coated in poison and it kills him again.

But Pap gets out of it with just the tying run crossing, so we go extras.

10th inning, as Jeter claps from the sidelines repeatedly, not just live but in slow-motion replays, Gardner tries to bunt the winning run over. Victor's throw hits him, and everybody's safe. Replay shows in vivid detail Gardner's last two steps to first base. As Joe Morgan watches each....step...clearly...go...INSIDE (that's the illegal side to you and me, kids)... the baseline...he says with a straight face that the umpire made the correct call--that Gardner has done nothing wrong. Even the producer takes a break from planning out his next Jeter-clapping shot and gives Morgan a chance to change his bullshit story. We watch again, and it's confirmed--he's 100%, clear as day, inside the line as the ball reaches him. And Morgan sticks to his guns! Even Michael Kay is sitting at home going "that takes guts, even I couldn't bring myself to say that's not interference"! And Miller said nothing! Orel Sax vaguely disagreed, but this is a case where the guy next to you is lying, you're all staring at the evidence, and you let him just go right on lying without saying shit!

Oki goes on to walk in the winning run. Which, honestly, was the best way for them to win, because it limited the celebration, though that smug piece of nonchalant repeatin' shit Cano and his disease-ridden pals tried really hard to make it appear as if the Yanks truly earned the win in any way whatsoever.

But back to our pal Joe Morgan. I'd been completely pissed at him way before the 10th. And way before Kalish's great diving catch that he passed it off by saying it's much easier to make a catch on your glove side. It was much earlier, when he was criticizing the Red Sox for...well, let me make an analogy. Ahmad Rashad played in four Super Bowls for the Minnesota Vikings. His team lost every time. His wife, who you know as Clair Huxtable, asked him "if you knew you were gonna lose, why did you keep going back?" And that was Joe Morgan tonight. He said that if the Red Sox knew they were gonna lose all these players to injury, they should have gotten other major leaguers to replace them! Hel-looooo, we kinda were under the impression these guys were coming back! Some did, before getting injured again! And who the fuck do you think we replaced them with? What is Mike Lowell? What is Bill Hall? What is Jed Lowrie? We're lucky to have these guys as back-ups. And we're sitting here in the last week of the season as one of five teams alive in a league where four go to the playoffs anyway!

Joe Morgan needs to retire right now. Not next year, not at the end of the season, tonight. Before bed. Though if this guy laid down on top of the fridge and you told him he was in the wrong place, he'd insist he was on a bed over and over and then tell you it's your fault that his bed is too cold, even though... you live... in a fucking igloo! While Jon Miller sits there with a mouthful of string cheese. And Jeter claps. And then claps again in slow motion. And then again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

I'm glad when I do check out the Sox on nationally broadcast games, I leave the mute on. Really glad I did last night.

As a Minnesota Vikings fan who suffered through all the losses in the Super Bowl, I must correct you. Rashad was only in one Super Bowl, in 1976 (his first year in Minnesota). But I understood the point.

Yeah, Paps got squeezed by the ump last night, but he also gave up three solid singles and still bears a good chunk of the blame for that loss. Further evidence that he's no longer a dominant reliever; his league-leading 8 blown saves are one of the top reasons that the Sox will be going home for the winter next week. By the way, his season ERA is now above 4.00, and his career ERA went higher than Joakim Soria's a couple weeks ago.*

I do agree (not exactly going out on a limb here) that Joe Morgan is a major idiot. A shame that Fire Joe Morgan only publishes once a year on Deadspin these days.

Oh well, we won one more game than I expected to this weekend, and put a dent in the Yanks' chances of winning the division...hopefully we finish that job next weekend at Fenway.

*To reiterate, I don't advocate looking at ERA to evaluate relievers, but Jere cited career ERA to defend Paps early this season.

BTW, last night's loss was so disappointing that I almost tuned into WEEI to listen to Green Fields of the Mind, but then had to remind myself that Castiglione wouldn't read that until the last day of the season.

I have to say, I was expecting nothing coming into the weekend, and even after they grabbed the one-run lead I didn't expect Paps to hold it against the top of the MFYs' order, so last night really wasn't all that disappointing. They put a little bit of a scare into the MFYs and their fans on Friday/Saturday, and I'm okay settling for that. We'll be back next year, with better health, and hopefully an upgraded bullpen.